Ankit Fadia is an Indian independent computer security consultant. He is a bestselling author who has written 14 books, delivered more than 1000 talks in 25 countries, received numerous awards, has trained more than 25,000 people globally, offers scholarships and awards to students, advises corporates on cyber security issues.
Background
Ankit Fadia was born on May 24, 1985 in Coimbatore. He was gifted a personal computer when he was 12. He says he started taking an interest in hacking after a year of playing video games. At the age of 14, Fadia started a website hackingtruths.box.sk, which he says, acquired many readers, encouraging him to write a book. At the age of 15, his book "An ethical hacking" made him the youngest author to be published by Macmillan, India. The book received favorable response in India, and made Fadia popular in the country. However, he was also accused of plagiarism. When a foreign reviewer alleged that the book contained a tutorial plagiarised from another website, Fadia stated in response that he originally contributed the material to the website identified as the source.
Career
After his first book came in the limelight, Fadia became sought-after among the corporate clients in India as well as on the conference speaking circuit. He wrote more books on computer security, and spoke at several seminars across schools and colleges in India. He also started a consultancy out of Malaysia. He started providing his own computer security courses, including the "Ankit Fadia Certified Ethical Hacker" programme in alliance with Reliance World. In 2008, the IMT Ghaziabad Centre for Distance Learning signed an MoU with Fadia to organise its one-year Post-Graduate Diploma in Cyber Security. In 2009, Fadia stated that he was working in New York as an Internet security expert for "prestigious companies". Fadia also endorsed the Flying Machine jeans brand of Arvind Mills.
Fadia was dismissed as a fad by some security and cryptography enthusiasts, who attributed his success to the tech-illiterate media. Fadia has dismissed the critics who question his credibility as an expert, saying "If I had been fake, my growth would have stopped 10 years ago"